I am a Partner with Future Workplace, an executive development firm that assists organizations in re-thinking, re-defining and re-imagining their corporate recruiting, learning & talent management strategies to prepare for the 2020 workplace. I am the co-author of the best selling book, The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop & Keep Tomorrow’s Employees Today (Harper Collins) and also the author of two books on Corporate Universities: Lessons In Building A World-Class Workforce.
I have spent much of my career in marketing, human resources, and corporate learning roles and now I consult for FORTUNE 1000 firms. I actively follow and write about mega trends of globalization, multiple generations and social media with an emphasis on how these trends impact the workplace of the future. I live in New York City and enjoy the energy of living and working among 8 million people.

Gamification: Three Ways To Use Gaming For Recruiting, Training, and Health & Wellness

It’s game on, for Human Resource officers. Increasingly, organizations like Marriott, Deloitte, AetnaAetna and even the Department of Defense are using gaming to recruit, develop and motivate employees.

Just what is gamification? Is it the latest management fad? Will it still be something we talk about in 2020?

The growing interest in gamification stems from a desire to increase engagement levels among employees and in the process bring more visibility, openness and a system of rewards and recognition into the workplace. Given the recent engagement numbers released from Gallup, showing 71 percent of American workers are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” in their work, gamification is finding its way on the agenda of the Chief Human Resource Officer.

Gartner Group defines gamification as the concept of employing game mechanics to non-game activities such as recruitment, training and health and wellness. Gartner predicts that by 2014, more than 70 percent of global 2,000 organizations will have at least one “gamified” application, which can range from mastering a specific skill or improving one’s health.

In a recent Pew Internet/Elon University report entitled, The Future Of Gamification, 1,021 Internet experts were interviewed with some university researchers suggesting that the principles of gamification could actually improve creativity, learning, participation and motivation. In fact, 53 percent of this sample of Internet experts predicts there will be significant advances in the usage and adoption of gamification in the workplace by 2020 with uses ranging from education, to wellness, marketing and communications.

Karl Kapp, author of Gamification of Learning & Instruction, believes the key to gamification is how addictive it can become across all generations of people. Kapp says the rewards that are part of gamification encourage users to stay engaged and interact with each other, building relationships that will draw them back.

The power of gamification comes down to this: it taps into the competitive fires we all have and as we play a game, we become more engaged, feel a greater sense of accomplishment and are more willing to go the extra mile in either making more sales calls, completing more training programs, or answering more customer center calls. And because our progress, we continue to increase our engagement with the game and reach new levels.

So, how can you use gamification to better recruit, train and engage workers? Here are three examples for you to consider:

RECRUITING: Marriott International Inc. was an early adopter to testing how gamification can be used to recruit new employees.

Marriott developed a hotel-themed online game similar to Farmville or The Sims, in which players have to juggle all the responsibilities of a hotel kitchen manager. Users get acquainted with the industry, all the while earning virtual rewards that will enhance the image of that industry in their eyes. At My Marriott Hotel™ on Facebook, you can start playing this game by selecting your language from English, Spanish, French, Arabic and Mandarin, and then begin managing a “virtual” hotel restaurant kitchen. The rationale behind the game is that as Marriott expands in growth markets outside the U.S., and the company seeks to attract more Millennials – those between the ages 18 and 27 –the company must find new ways to interest them in hospitality careers. This becomes especially critical in emerging markets where the hospitality industry might be less established. The next step for gamification will likely bring it thoroughly into the recruiting process, attracting candidates through social games on platforms that include FacebookFacebook but also LinkedIn and even job boards like Monster. So go ahead and play My Marriott on Facebook and while you’re playing the game, think about the opportunity in your company to use social network platforms to engage global prospective new hires and show them what it’s really like to work in your company.

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Hi, Jeanne. I’m also looking forward to your upcoming webinar on gamification and the more recent generations of workers entering the market.

If we “get over” the idea that gamification simply means making something (that would not otherwise be) fun, and start thinking about it as the application of what we know about motivation and about simulation learning, the more seriously this will be approached. All of this has to do with organizational learning and employee enablement, as I also commented in my blog about Karl’s marvelous book (http://drlarryhiner.com/2012/05/08/intersection-of-games-learning-and-organizational-psychology-gamification-blog-book-tour-underway/).

Interesting read! The application of Gamification in the recruitment industry is beyond IT or Service sectors. Gamification itself as a concept when used properly creates brand awareness for the company. If the tool is right, it can reach to thousands of people in a single day. Engaging people in an interesting way is achieved more frequently. And that is what we are trying to achieve at HuntShire. There should be one platform which companies across different verticals should be able to use effectively.

It is interesting to see how companies are using gaming to achieve their diverse corporate objectives. For Marriott, developing their talent pool – knowing that some will go to other companies to pursue the career, but as a market leader, knowing that they’ll get a significant proportion of the demand generated – -at least, I assume this is what they believe and that research has demonstrated. There are the more tried and true games to help people through what could be dry subjects, as evidenced in other examples, and then how to augment training efforts for key senior leaders. It would also be interesting to develop training games that inspire friendly competition, as in the Aetna example, and leveraging the SOPs of online gaming portals. Applying gaming to training isn’t new, although the tech possibilities continue to make it interesting. This can inspire community development within a company…if organizations can be convinced to fund and evolve these efforts to be relevant to their markets.

Is Gamification really the answer to any of the questions raised here? Why people are not engaged at work may have something to do with the really cool games they play at home? Surely we can improve our current online content dump training/education models with some participative (peer-to-peer) activities? Is Gamification a fad whose time is over? What would one have to do to make work a game not a boring vocation? Will online education finally prepare a workforce that is not bored when they are not presented with a workplace that matches the goodies they have at home? How do we enable people, at work, to show us their creativity as they do so naturally when they play online games at home? So many questions but does anyone who is not trying to make a $ have a genuine answer to any of them, including me? Cheers, Richard.

Get ahead of the corporate learning edge by implementing serious games into your initial instruction course. Have no idea where to begin? This custom article breaks down the process and provides insight on each segment of operation from start to learner feedback from impressed employees. http://www.gameonlearning.com/library/implementing-serious-learning-games-familiar-territorytraining-execs.cfm